Tag Archives: Swearing

Flora: Daddy has to work a lot right now because we have to eat and Mommy’s writing another book, and books don’t pay nearly as well as corporate whoring.

It’s one of those moments when you (I) just don’t know when to laugh or cry, right?

I laugh.

Note to Self: deploy internal censor more often when speaking in front of the children. And instruct Flora to not use the term “corporate whoring” when talking to her friends. Better yet, perhaps, I should stop using the term in front of Flora. Children. People, period.

II.

Flora’s lost my car keys and is panicking. She can’t find them, and we can’t leave, and it’s all her fault, and tears, panic, self-hate, help mom… I find them, in five seconds, under her brother’s ice-skating helmet. Then deliver a lecture about how panicking is a useful response only if it gives you the adrenaline boost you need to run away from a predator but is absolutely useless when you need to strategize, i.e. retrace your steps and figure out…

Cinder: Not helping, Mom.

True. I know this. What am I doing? Never, ever deliver a lecture to a hysterical child. Instead:

I’d turn on The Passion of Rumi to punish myself but I’ve raised clever children; they won’t let me.

IV.

I’m burning supper, and the kids are pretending to be helping, and nobody’s doing the dishes, but there are enough clean plates left to set the table and Ender is really really hungry and getting really really annoying and…

Jane: Cinder, please, please, please do something to amuse your brother for five more minutes so I can get supper on the table?

Cinder: But of course. At your service, sir-yes-sir. Ender, come here. Come here ya’ little buttsack. Listen. ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, children turn dead if you hold them by the neck for a minute or two.’ Look, I’m a poet, just like Mom.

Ender: Mom? You know what the difference between you and me is? You swear at people. I just swear for fun.

Go ahead. No, please, go ahead, indulge the judge within. There are so many things WRONG with that statement, I don’t even know where to start.

It’s only partially true.

I don’t really swear AT people. More at the THINGS they do.

More often yet: at my self. My brain. The things it refuses to do when I really need it to perform…

Still. I hereby resolve to swear less. In front of the sponge-like four-year-old, anyway.

II.

I have this deeply insightful point to make and I’m just trying to find the right way to lead up to it, and then…

Flora: Mom? Do we have any of that delicious bean mush left?

Jane: What? That? Yeah?

Flora: Can I have that for breakfast?

Yes, of course, but I have to help her heat it up—because it’s been left overnight in the pan and so requires some, um, resuscitation shall we say—and then, ok, a tortilla or two to go with it, and then by the time I come back to the laptop, I can’t remember where I was going, what I was thinking…

Cinder: That depends. Are you going to talk to yourself and make weird hand gestures and roll your eyes and stop suddenly and shout, “YES!” or “Fuck, no, that won’t work,” because you’re stuck on that story?

Jane: Um… maybe…

Cinder: Then no. But can you bring back some of that good focaccia bread? And don’t eat it all on the way home!

OK, this stopping swearing in front of my children thing probably isn’t going to happen.

And also: seriously, a goddamn chimpanzee with a typewriter could have written it better than I had in that first draft form. Your writing tip for the day, boys and girls: an amateur despairs and gives up. A professional despairs, goes for a walk, downs a triple mocha, and redrafts.

Flora: Are you going to talk to me as we walk, or ignore me and just mumble to yourself and do that creepy thing with your eyes?

Jane: Um. I don’t know. Maybe?

Flora: Can I make a video of you and put it on Youtube?

Jane: No!

Flora: Can I make a video of you and show it to all my friends?

Jane: Why do you hate me?

Flora: We don’t hate you, Mom. We just like to mock you.

Awesome. I go for my walk alone.

IV.

I redraft. It still sucks. Woe is I. Or rather, woe is my editor, who will have to fix it.

Point: “Filed.” I’ve told you before, have I not? An amateur thinks it has to be good. A professional knows it just has to be done.

V.

This is the moment where I try to adapt the good/done, amateur/professional metaphor to parenting. It’s rather torturous, but it goes like this. The amateur/theoretical parent—i.e., your childless friend who is so full of theory and advice and knows exactly how he will raise his kids or even any first-time, first-year mom at that stage of the journey (do you remember that stage? I find it’s fading for me, too fast, thank goodness I write so I have proof of how insufferably arrogant and “right” I was)—thinks it has to be perfect. That it can be perfect. The professional parent—that is, anyone who’s done it in the real world for more than a year—knows it just has to… be. It just… is.

Ender learned a new word today. His fourth or fifth I suppose. I’m so proud. I only wish his pronunciation was a mite better…

We’re at the Glenbow Museum, yyc’s answer to whatever THE museum in your town is. It has armour, paintings. Teepees. Rocks. That’s the trouble…

Cinder and Flora do their crafts in the Discovery Room, and then decide that they want to show Ender the rocks and minerals collection. We go up. They all pet the geode. (There’s a pet geode you can pet there. For real. You should come visit.) And Cinder says,

“See, Ender? You know what that is? A rock. That’s a rock.”

And Ender, adulation in his eyes, looks at his big brother and says…

“Fuck?”

Flora’s eyes get big as saucers. Cinder howls and howls. “Yes, Ender, that’s a fuck. A great big fuck.” Sideways glance at me. “What? He said it first.”

Why the rerun: Nothing By The Book is taking a page from old school un-social media and doing a re-run summer, while I spend the hot days getting a tan, running through sprinkles, selling one book, writing another, reading two dozen more, neglecting my garden, falling in love, jumping off cliffs—you know. Everything but blogging. But, you get reruns of my favourite stuff, so everyone wins. Likely keeping up with Instagram—NothingByTheBook—connect there, if you like? Or Twitter—Follow @nothingbtbook or/and Follow @paddleink.”

Jane: Oh thank God. I’ll just get you the food colouring. And the vodka.

Cinder: We need vodka?

Jane: Um, yes.

…

And you know what I hope? That at one point, some time in the future, they realize that each act of my swearing-infested baking, each batch of rock-hard cupcakes, every lopsided cake, and are-they-supposed-to-taste like this cookies–each one of those was an act of unconditional love.

Because I fucking hate baking. And every time I do it–and, frankly, I do it as rarely as possible and only when they ask (beg) me to–I do it only because I love them.

This is really hilarious, but also a little offensive, so if you’ve got bad language sensitivity, click delete / next now. It’s a story from August 6, 2009, when Cinder was about seven, and it’s our Christmas gift to you.

We were on a crazy Mythbusters marathon, and Cinder and Flora’s absolute favourite episode, which they watched over and over again, was the Holiday Special, in which the Mythbusters test, among other things, the variety of products that are supposed to keep yer X-Mas tree greener, fresher, and needle-full longer.

Remember the episode? They put the trees in a bleach solution, spray one with hairspray, etc etc and one of them gets a “little blue pill” added to its water.

The little blue pill is Viagra, but they don’t say so. The announcer introduces it as the little blue pill, and then one of the Mythbusters does a “well, how do I describe this, people are probably watching this with their kids—Santa’s little helper?” and make a big deal out of it.

Anyway—the first time I watched the episode with me kinder, I said without much reflection, “Viagra? They must mean Viagra?” the kids asked what’s Viagra, I said, a little blue pill, apparently not being in a mood to discuss erectile dysfunction with a 7 year old and a 4 year old, and the episode continued.

Having committed the episode to memory over repeated viewings, Cinder at one point starts telling me what the bleach did to the tree (bad things), what the hairspray (pretty good, actually) and other stuff. I, having only watched parts of the show but once, have no real recollection.

“But you know what the best preservative of all was?” he asks.

“What?”

“The little fuck pill.”

“?????”

“You know—the little fuck pill.”

Words I did not expect to come out of MY seven year old’s mouth, ever—yet a strangely appropriate moniker for Viagra. And I’m naturally curious where and by whom he heard Viagra thus described (and am wondering if that’s something that came out of Sean or my mouth at some point? Cause it sounds like something we might say… but would we be so obtuse as to say it in front of the children? Well… maybe…)

“Where… what…” I start to phrase the question.

“You called it another name, remember? It sounded like Vinegar?”

“Viagra.”

“Yeah, Viagra. But on the show, they said, the little blue pill, and they wouldn’t say the name of it, because kids could be watching, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, so I figured it was probably called the fuck pill. Because that’s the word grown-ups never want kids to hear.”

Share this:

Ender: I sorry, Daddy!
Sean: Um… why are you sorry, Ender?
Ender: I am sorry. I peed on your sheet. And now I sorry.
Sean: You peed on my sheet? Like, the sheet on my bed?
Ender: I did. I am sorry. Mama giving you a new sheet right now.
Sean: Oh, good.
Ender: I also peed on your pillow.

And I can’t tell you what Sean said next.

But I can tell you what Cinder said a little later when:

Ender: I! PEED!
Cinder: Yeah, so did I, Ender. Y’a know what the difference is? I peed in the toilet.
Ender: I peed on your foot.
Cinder: I know!

And then, their mother had a bit of a struggle with a project and:

Jane: Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Cinder: What’s wrong?
Jane: I’m just having a really hard time focusing on my work.
Cinder: I’m having a really hard time getting this Minecraft mod to work properly. Want to swear together?

And then, there was a horrible, horrible conference call, and the mother lost all moral high ground and self-restraint:

My own personal goal for this month… next month… any month, really: to swear less. At least in front of the children. At the children. I mean, in front of the children. I don’t swear at them. At least not out loud. Much. Hey, it’s been a stressful month, ok? Anyway. My goal. Swear less. So it’s eerily appropriate that I revisit today the time Cinder regaled me with all the swear words he knew.

We picked up some books at the library yesterday, including a stack of “Phonics Comix” for Cinder by request. He’s flipping through one on the way to the car. “Fuck! The only word in this book I can read is “moo!” Well, I guess this one here is probably cow…”

A few hours later that night, as we are getting ready for bed, said child comes up to be with a sneaky look on his face. “Hey, mom–do you want to hear me say all the swear words I know?”

(What, by the way, would be the proper response to this request?)

I say, “Um, not particularly.”

“Are you sure?”

“Have you a burning desire to regale me with all the swear words you know?”

“Yes.”

“OK, go.”

So he starts to list off—an amazingly modest list, actually that starts with “darn”—not “a real one, but apparently it used to be, did you know that?”—gives top billing to “Jesus Christ!” (which is what Catholic-raised I holler when I explode a pyrex baking dish and what not)—proceeds through shoot, shit and fuck, adds for reasons I do not understand “shoulder” and then, after a dramatic pause, finishes with hell.

Silence.

“So, do you want to know how I learned these?”

“Unfortunately, I think we can trace pretty much every single one of those to either me or Daddy.”

“Um… I guess. But actually, the other day, at the potluck party, we played this game, Truth or Dare, and one of the kids was dared to say all the swear words he knew, and he did, and I was taking notes.”

“Notes?”

“You know, mental notes. And KH said swear words were useful things to use if you wanted to offend your enemies, did you know that?”

What they didn’t tell you in any of the parenting books is just how gross the first years of parenthood are. Snot. Poop. Or, as we used to call it in the time before children—shit. So many, many shit stories.

So here, to celebrate April Fools’ Day, is the one of the best two-in-one poop-n-swear stories from Flora’s first year. Cinder was two months short of three years.

Flora has the mother of all blow outs first thing in the morning. (I’ve always thought people exaggerated when they reported these kinds of things; now I know.) There was poop up her back to her hairline; grosser still, it went up her sleeves to her elbows.

“Aaaah!” I say, as I realize it left the diaper.

“Iiick!” I say, as I realize it’s soaked through the entire sleeper.

“Ugh!” I say as I realize it’s leaked through the sleeper onto the sheet and the mattress.

“What? Why?” I stammer. My toddler—my baby—what’s coming out of his mouth?

“Daddy would say fuck,” he says seriously.

From Life’s Archives, March 31, 2005.

Seven years later: The first time Ender said fuck, I wasn’t the slightest bit surprised. Mortified beyond belief because of where we were at the time, but definitely not surprised (that story’s here). We do learn something along the journey. Not always what we’re supposed to learn, or what we should learn, but we do learn something.

Ender learned a new word today. His fourth or fifth I suppose. I’m so proud. I only wish his pronunciation was a mite better…

We’re at the Glenbow Museum. A perfect day. Cinder and Flora do their crafts in the Discovery Room, and then decide that they want to show Ender the rocks and minerals collection. We go up. They all pet the geode. And Cinder says, “See, Ender? You know what that is? A rock. That’s a rock.”

And Ender, adulation in his eyes, looks at his big brother and says… “Fuck?”

Flora’s eyes get big as saucers. Cinder howls and howls. “Yes, Ender, that’s a fuck. A great big fuck.” Sideways glance at me. “What? He said it first.”